Clone Club

Orphan Black, Season 2, Episode 8 Recap: Holy Tilda Swinton!

How long can Allison and Donnie stay off Dyad’s, and the cops’, radar? Is it Felix’s turn to go to therapy? Do you think we’ll see Tony again before the end of the season? Cosima’s gonna be okay… right?

Orphan Black has provided Tatiana Maslany with an actor’s dream: the ability to take on multiple characters, all in peril and in need of answers, often playing against herself in gut-wrenching and hilarious scenes, is a rare gift. It seems the writers and creators know just how rare it is to find an actress like Tatiana Maslany, and play Dyad in their own work. Let’s see what else she can do, they probably say as they come up with characters that they think would be fun to watch. Then she reads the script, nails the character’s cadence and personality in a quick read-through, drops the mic Chris Rock-style, and a new clone is born.

That’s what I thought when we first see Tony, swerving a big white van into a parking garage as his friend bleeds from a gunshot wound to the stomach. Even with his face covered in a bandana, it’s clear Tony is Maslany, but in what incarnation? When he finally takes off his covering, it’s her! I mean, him! Her as him! As Tony scrambles for medical supplies, his friend tells him to find the cop who contacted him before—he has to find Beth Childs (who we know is dead, so who’s he gonna find?).

Back in Siobhan’s house where Ethan sits, Sarah arrives and tells her Kira and Felix aren’t coming until she knows it’s safe—or until Siobhan’s hired guns find them waiting in the alley. There’s a lovely reunion and Ethan looks on longingly as Felix, Kira, and Mrs. S. embrace. Is he missing his own daughter or seeing double helixes in Kira’s smiling part-clone face?

In Cosima’s lab, Delphine tries to swipe in and she can’t. Cosima comes to the door and tells her she isn’t wanted, but she drops off a package from Sarah—it’s the tooth Kira pulled in the previous episode.*

**Speaking of—How super-human is this kid?

Alison, fresh as a sober daisy, comes home from rehab to find her husband curled up in bed, surrounded by empty bottles of nips that his wife once hid around the house. In his defense, he is shaken and plunged into despair after killing a renowned scientist, but he’s too drunk to explain at the moment.

Rejected and sad, Delphine heads to Aldus’ office to find Rachel sitting at his desk. As her sweet French brain thinks, “What the what?!” Rachel tells her Aldus died of a heart attack on the private jet in the early morning hours. (Does she know he was shot? I wouldn’t be surprise if they had some sort of tracking device on him.) Although Rachel doesn’t seem to be relishing in her new role, she does urge Delphine to stay on task, which is finding a cure for the clones’ illness.

Felix gets home to find Art already in his apartment. Before he can tell him off, he’s dumbstruck by the sight of Tony, who’s even more pissed that Felix isn’t Beth. Felix and Art talk in the hallway and Felix schools him in the way of trans identity and proper pronoun usage. All three of them want information from the other, but no one’s saying anything and Felix has his most dangerous babysitting job yet.

Kira and Sarah play in Mrs. S’s house when there’s a knock on the door. Thanks to her oh-so-stable upbringing, Kira’s first question is, “Should we hide?” No need—it’s Delphine, with a proposal from Rachel: Bring in Ethan Duncan to provide a gene therapy cure for Cosima’s/all clones’ disease, which will mean Kira won’t have to be a lab rat! Sarah says no, but Siobhan says they’ll consider it.

Back at Dyad, Cosima returns from a coffee run to find Scott and some other scientists playing a game that seems like Settlers of Catan meets Dungeons and Dragons meets Magic the Gathering meets Cones of Dunshire. It’s serious nerd business is what I’m saying. Cosima’s cool with them playing as she does her own work (which looks like researching Delphine), but within a few minutes she ends up playing—and schooling the guys (all hail, nerd queen Cosima!)

Delphine comes in and tells her everything that’s gone down, from Aldus’ death to Ethan Duncan’s return, to which Cosima responds, “I’m gonna keep the promise I made to you when we first met…. That one day I’m gonna get you completely baked.” Who knew Cosima was such a pothead? (Well, considering the hair, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.)

Back at Felix’s apartment, we see the first of many scenes in which he and Tony make small talk and try to get information out of one another. But it’s not really gonna happen—not unless Tony can get Felix on his back, which is certainly not gonna happen. They have this weird, unsettling flirtation the entire episode that’s both hilarious and uncomfortable, and highlights Gavaris and Maslany at their best.*

**Random poll: Who else wants to have a sleepover with the two of them and pretend to be the third orphan? Just me? Cool, cool, cool.

At Allison’s house, her first day back from rehab isn’t going so great: She comes downstairs to the basement to find her husband packing a suitcase, saying he’s leaving and apologizing for everything. In a surprising show of affection, Allison asks if he’s stopped loving her. This leads to them having their first honest conversation in months, and she not only admits her part in killing Aynsley but he admits that he shot Leekie! For such a shocking revelation, Allison is oddly unphased—who knew she and Donnie would become a modern Bonnie and Clyde? She’s every bit the type-A soccer mom even when chastising Donnie for his sloppy transport of Leekie’s body, and you can only imagine the scolding Donnie got after he tells her that he used her gun to (accidentally) do the deed.

Back in the lab, we see laughing Cosima and Delphine, high on…probably everything, knowing what Dyad has access to. As they start to come down, they get serious. Cosima says, “If you ever betray us again I’ve got enough dirt on you to destroy your entire career.”

Felix continues to stall Tony until Sarah can come by and explain some things, but is almost thwarted when Tony finds various portraits that Felix has painted of the clones. Of course, to Tony, it’s all some version of him—and he’s sick of waiting to find out why. He’s finally had enough and storms out of the apartment the next morning, only to bump into Sarah in the hallway. She breaks down everything and Tony is oddly accepting (maybe that’s what happens when you become a “trans bandit”). Turns out the message from Sammy was to, “Tell Beth keep the faith. Paul is like me, he’s on it, he’s a ghost.” Well, that certainly counts as clarification in the world of Orphan Black—and by that I mean, I have no idea what to do with that info, or how it connects with Paul’s current absence, which Rachel finds “irksome.”

Rachel’s irked, which on top of being her regular icy self makes for an extra-awkward interaction with her not-dead dad, who’s at the lab ready to help find a cure. During this second face-to-face with her maker, Rachel gets the business out of the way and then asks what she’s been dying to know. “How is it the unmonitored tramp was successful?” she says—you guessed it!—coldly. Professor Duncan answers, “She’s a failure, not a success—you are all barren by design.” The camera cuts between Rachel hearing this news and her destroying her office in tears. This is why the ice queen is so icy! She’s wanted a family all her life, and she’ll never be allowed to have one biologically.

Tony, meanwhile, gets ready to leave, with the plan being for him to get out of town before Dyad can find him. After a weird-yet-touching goodbye to Felix, we return to the lab to find Cosima and Scott tidying up in preparation for Professor Duncan’s arrival, and Cosima finally admits to Scott that she’s the subject they’re working on. Duncan arrives and seconds after shaking his hand, Cosima begins coughing up blood and seizing.

We cut away, unsure of her fate, to Kira and Sarah asleep side-by-side. Kira wakes up and opens up the copy of The Island of Dr. Moreau, given to her by Duncan the day before, and we see inside that there are formulas and equations—perhaps the key to curing Cosima, if she isn’t already too far gone?

The only reason I’m nervous for Cosima’s fate is that, with the introduction of yet another clone, there must be ways to keep Tatiana Maslany’s head from exploding, and maybe that means putting some clones on the backburner (in a coma, for example). But given Cosima’s proximity to the scientific answers, losing her would really set us back. Then again, given the creators’ approach to the show, we probably don’t know half as much as we think we do, so this could end up being illuminating. But this is just fear talking, preparing for Cosima’s brief medically induced hiatus, which may not even happen. What do you guys think?